


A Night Made for Monsters

by AlulaSpeaks



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Episode: s01e01 Pilot, Gen, Gen or Pre-Slash, Pining Dean Winchester, Stanford Era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-14
Updated: 2018-05-14
Packaged: 2019-05-07 00:43:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 821
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14659662
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlulaSpeaks/pseuds/AlulaSpeaks
Summary: It’s half inevitability and half lunacy that turns Dean’s thoughts west, something deep down in his gut. A long-denied, foundational hunger that calls him across the country. That desperate drive to Palo Alto, the long road unfurling before him and thoughts bent towards his family, as near to prayer as Dean has ever been.





	A Night Made for Monsters

**Author's Note:**

> For @wetsammywinchester, on the occasion of her birthday, who mused about that liminal space between Dean’s arrival in Palo Alto and breaking into Sam’s apartment. Be forewarned, there is a little cest in my gen, as per the usual.

It’s half inevitability and half lunacy that turns Dean’s thoughts west, something deep down in his gut. A long-denied, foundational hunger that calls him across the country. That desperate drive to Palo Alto, the long road unfurling before him and thoughts bent towards his family, as near to prayer as Dean has ever been.

It’s late when he pulls in. The night more black here on the outskirts than in the city, but brighter still than than the backroads that led him here. Places like this never get dark, not all the way, and they never go still. The streets are alive, packed with ghosts and ghouls and wicked things made cheap. Declawed and toothless, parodies in stripper red. And still none of it as phony as Dean stalking the streets of some college town.

Two years since they’ve talked. Longer still since he’s laid eyes, but Dean knows he’s in the right place. He’s done his homework. Knows every place Sam’s thought to call his own, every place he laid his head from that last dial tone until now.

He knows Sam the second he sees the stretch of his shadow across the ground. The sound of his own indrawn breath is lost in the creaking of the steering wheel and the reflexive clutch of his fingers. Sam isn’t alone - a girl pressed close to his side, long blonde waves tumbling over her shoulders - and Dean tips headlong into the glaring blind spot in his knowledge. Who has Sam lain with?

They step into the glow of a streetlight and Dean’s first clear thought is long legs, eyes tracing up the astonishing length of them. Sam’s grown, both up and into himself. It’s in the way he carries his weight, the curl of his hair, the comfortable fit of his clothes. His girl is dressed up sweet in a little nurses outfit and heels that bring her forehead on a level with Sam’s lips. She’s flushed and gorgeous and it makes Dean’s teeth ache. When they walk, their strides sync in unhurried unison.

They stop at the threshold of the building, and she sinks her hand into Sam’s hair, pulls him down into a lingering kiss. Sam’s hands slip from his hoodie pocket to hold her, huge against her shoulders. They break apart and she pulls open the door, bowing low and gallant to usher Sam inside. Sam’s head falls back, teeth flashing white in the overhead lights as they move into the stairwell. Laughter so clear in the lines of his shoulders that Dean can almost hear it.

Dean always knew that Sam wanted to build something for himself, even had faded photograph ideas of Sam with kids underfoot and a girl on his arm, but somehow he never thought of this part. This between where Sam is still building. Where things are messy and growing and more real for it.

It leaves him reeling, mind full of whiskey-haze and vertigo, even without a drop of liquor. He breathes deep, shakes it off. Dullness is a luxury Dean can’t afford, and it wouldn’t help him, even if he could. Some knives, no matter how misused, stay sharp. And one way or another this was always going hurt.

The light in Sam’s apartment flicks on and Sam comes to the front window, pulling off his hoodie as he goes. His hair is a wild mess, his t-shirt rucked up above the cut of his hip. He closes the gauzy curtains, turning himself into indistinct shadow. Dean watches as the girl moves up beside him, as Sam bends his head to hers, watches as their shadows melt into each other.

For a moment, Dean thinks about leaving, but knows it’s already too late. Old feelings are shaking off their dormancy, welling up to trip over the same old ruts. He can already hear the same worn-out arguments unspooling in his head, and he can’t leave until he hears them in Sam’s voice. Some things are real and some are meant to be photographs and he needs to know which he is.

He sits there until Sam and his girl leave the room and the lights leapfrog deeper and deeper into the apartment. Until they go out altogether. And longer still, until the shape of their joined shadows fades from behind his eyes.

Dean uncurls his fingers from around the steering wheel, ignoring the aching creak of his knuckles easing from their clench. He steps out of the Impala into the muddy night air. His pulse throbs down in his fingertips and his leather coat has never sat so heavy on his shoulders.

He is here to pull Sam back into his hands. To gather close the pieces of what once was his and see how many still are. And how many he can take back. On a night made for monsters, Dean knows himself to be a desperate and hungry thing.


End file.
